3 October.- As I must do something or go mad, I write this diary. It
is now six o’clock, and we are to meet in the study in half an hour
and take something to eat, for Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward are
agreed that if we do not eat we cannot work our best. Our best will
be, God knows, required today. I must keep writing at every
chance, for I dare not stop to think. All, big and little, must go
down; perhaps at the end the little things may teach us most. The
teaching, big or little, could not have landed Mina or me anywhere
worse than we are to-day. However, we must trust and hope. Poor
Mina told me just now, with the tears running down her dear
cheeks, that it is in trouble and trial that our faith is tested-that we
must keep on trusting; and that God will aid us up to the end. The
end! oh my God! what end?... To work! To work!

When Dr. Van Helsing and Dr. Seward had come back from seeing
poor Ren-field, we went gravely into what was to be done. First,
Dr. Seward told us that when he and Dr. Van Helsing had gone
down to the room below they had found Renfield lying on the
floor, all in a heap. His face was all bruised and crushed in, and the
bones of the neck were broken.

Dr. Seward asked the attendant who was on duty in the passage if
he had heard anything. He said that he had been sitting down-he
confessed to half dozing-when he heard loud voices in the room,
and then Renfield had called out loudly several times, "God! God!
God!" After that there was a sound of falling, and when he entered
the room he found him lying on the floor, face down, just as the
doctors had seen him. Van Helsing asked if he had heard "voices"
or "a voice," and he said he could not say; that at first it had
seemed to him as if there were two, but as there was no one in the
room it could have been only one. He could swear to it, if required,
that the word "God" was spoken by the patient. Dr. Seward said to
us, when we were alone, that he did not wish to go into the matter;
the question of an inquest had to be considered, and it would never
do to put forward the truth, as no one would believe it. As it was,
he thought that on the attendant’s evidence he could give a
certificate of death by misadventure in falling from bed. In case the
coroner should demand it, there would be a formal inquest,
necessarily to the same result.

When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our
next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be